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opinion Does the chief justice's Order of Canada problem go beyond Morgentaler's very unusual story? The most recent ap- pointments to the Order were announced on July 1. Seventy-five people (including Mor- gentaler) were honoured. They included, for exam- ple, prominent business people: Wallace McCain, chairman of Maple Leaf Foods; Gail Asper, a major shareholder and a director and officer of Canwest Global; and Frank McKenna, deputy chairman of the Toronto Dominion Bank. Buzz Har- grove, recently retired president of the Canadian Auto Work- ers union, was on the list. And there were several lawyers; one of them was Joan Clark of Montreal, who has appeared on occasion before the Supreme Court. All these are very worthy people, to be sure. But is it wise for the chief justice to be in- volved in granting honours to people closely identified with organizations that could easily end up before the Supreme Court, or to lawyers who plead before it? There's another side to the problem. What happens when someone who has the Order of Canada gets into trouble, and pressure builds to have his or her award taken away? A differ- ent kind of judgment is called for, and an even more difficult one. Only two people have been removed from the Order so far. Alan Eagleson, once president of the National Hockey League Players' Association and disbarred lawyer, was removed after he was convicted of fraud. David Ahenakew, former chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indians, was kicked out fol- lowing a number of public anti-Semitic statements. (It has been reported that McLachlin abstained from the vote on Ahenakew.) But diffi- cult situations continue to come up. Should Conrad Black's Order of Canada be taken away? What about onetime lawyer Sher Singh? Singh, a leader of the Sikh com- munity, was awarded the Order of Canada in 2002 but was disbarred five years later after a series of unfortunate per- sonal setbacks affected his legal practice (see the Canadian Lawyer cover story of February 2008). Letter-writing cam- paigns, for and against Singh remaining in the Order, were organized by his friends and detractors. These letters were addressed to the chief justice. (I wrote in Sher Singh's sup- port, and received a very polite acknowledgement.) Should the chief justice of the Supreme Court have anything to do with this kind of controversy? It is the constitution of the Order of Canada that makes the chief justice the chairperson of the advisory council. At her Au- gust press conference, McLachlin said, "It's not something I chose to do." Maybe it's time to change the Order's constitution and make someone else chairperson. The biggest beneficiary might be the chief justice. Philip Slayton has been dean of a law school and senior partner of a major Canadian law firm. Visit him online at philipslayton.com www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com OC T OBER 2008 29 ILLUSTRATION: DARCY MUENCHRATH